Chapter Eighteen: Rederine the Temaski I

"Father? Father, let's go play!"
The professor sighed, and turned to his son.
"No, I can't. I'm too busy."
"But you promised yesterday we could play any ball game I wanted today..."
The young boy whined.
"No."
The professor said firmly. The boy's shoulders sagged.
"Why not?"
"Because I've just discovered something recently."
The boy curiously peeked over his father's elbow at the desk. On it lay many papers, all with symbols, equations and words the boy was too young too understand, or even bother to comprehend.
"What are you working on?"
"Your great-grandfather's journal revealed some startling... information."
His eyes gleaming, the professor lined a ruler up to a certain design forming in the center of the page.
"He himself helped design several plant involving machines... he helped in several experiments..."
The professor let out a harsh laugh that the young boy was not used to, and he shivered.
"But what does that have to do with you, father?"
"I plan to recreate this half-finished design my grandfather started before he died. It's all about lost technology... and I think I know exactly how to do it."
The boy shivered again. His father's tone had somewhat changed to something... oddly... cold.
"But father... what does the machine do?"
The man laughed.
"It combines plant and human together. Wouldn't that be simply amazing?"
The boy thought about it, then frowned.
"I don't see the point..."
The professor turned back to his work.
"We might be able to find a whole new meaning to sources of energy - of power! We could create human batteries out of those good-for-nothings on the streets! That would be the best, wouldn't it?"
Human batteries?
The term made the young boy shudder. It sounded so cruel.
The young boy walked out of the room, clutching his ball to himself silently.
In the weeks that followed, the professor seemed to turn more and more away from his son.
He shut himself in his study, and only came out to drink water or take some food into his room.
The boy was beginning to feel more and more unwanted, more neglected and more lonely than he ever had so far in his life.
What was happening to him he could not understand.
His father had never been a workaholic, and he had never ignored his son like this before.
But the young boy kept hope that one day his father would revert back to his old self - the professor who loved his son more than anything, especially after his mother had died.
About three weeks later, the professor opened the door, looked around and then spotted his son sleeping outside of his door on the floor.
"Get up!"
He snapped.
The boy awoke from his dream, and looked up at his father.
"Yes father?"
He said timidly.
As he stood up, he thought that he had never had to have been timid or shy around the professor - it was his own father, for goodness' sake.
But the person he saw before him he could hardly recognise as his father.
The man before him had hardened lines on his face from late nights and hard work, his laughter lines no longer visible, and the figure was ... imposing, almost threatening. "Go to the places I've indicated here and bring back what I ordered on it. Pay them with this."
And shoving a sheet of paper and an envelope into the boy's hands, he slammed the door in the boy's face without another word.
The following week, the boy went back and forth from the house to stores and yards in the town and next, bringing back things such as thick to thin sheets of copper, plastic-coatings, what felt like too many yarz of wire...
By the end of the fifth day of such toil, the boy began to feel his hope for his old father back dwindle down.
This new plan to combine plant and human together; the idea of creating something as brutal as human batteries; it had caught his father up in a strange craze, changing him slowly but surely into something even his son could no longer recognise.
By the end of the week, the boy began to feel something else towards his father.
He didn't know what it was, but it made the boy feel extremely confused. His father hadn't spoken a word to him since that day he'd been told to gather materials; he hadn't even said a word of thanks for bringing all these things for him.
Each night the professor spent inside his study, sounds of soldering and drilling from inside - each night, the boy slept in his room, some nights allowing tears to spill and other nights too tired to.
The next day after the seventh of going back and forth, the boy was then told -
"You are no longer needed."
It stabbed the young boy in the heart to be told such a sentence by his own father, and during the week after, the boy went around in a dazed sort of shock.
His hope was dying.
However, a whole month after the professor had begun his work, he came out, smiling.
"I've created a prototype!"
He announced.
His son, who had been just outside, looked up at him in surprise.
He picked up his son and whirled him around in the air, laughing.
"This is great! My dear boy, we could make so much out of this!"
The boy was delighted that his old father seemed to be back.
When he entered the study to see what his father's invention was like, he let out a gasp.
It was huge, for one thing.
Much of the study had been cleared off to one side, leaving space for the invention.
It looked like a huge pillar of tarnished copper and grey metal, wires running everywhere, especially all over the floor.
There was something that looked like a control panel built into the left side of the machine.
In the center of the machine, a sheet of glass had been used to shield the hollow inside, which looked like a small, metal room.
"Wow... how does it work?"
The boy asked, awed by the strange machine.
The professor set his hands onto the boy's shoulders, smiling as he did so.
"It should be like this. The glass panel slides open. The person enters. Inside that little space, they sit down. Wires are connected to neccessary parts of the body. Then the glass door is closed, and the codes are entered into the machine. Above this, there should be a huge sphere of glass that will contain a plant. And that plant and the human will combine together, provided that the codes entered are correct."
The boy noticed that his hands gripped his shoulders too hard, and that his eyes were not to him but to the invention.
"Does it work?"
The boy whispered.
"Only one way to find out."
The man replied.
"I'm taking this to science fair next week. Will... you come with me?"
There was something hesitant in the professor's voice that made the boy feel uneasy, but he still said,
"Of course I will, father."
The following week, the professor and his son took the fantastic invention to the science fair three towns away.
At the second town, the professor stopped the vehicle, told his son to wait, and went to town.
The son waited.
After an hour, the professor returned in another vehicle, lugging behind something round and huge that was covered with cloth and tied down with ropes, and with two other men.
"Who are they?"
The boy asked.
"They are people I kept in contact with throughout the past few weeks."
The professor answered.
"What is that?"
The boy asked, pointing at the luggage. This time, he did not get a reply.